Several local trails have been closed after a grizzly bear chased a man and bluff charged a woman in separate incidents over the weekend.
Around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dave Cherry was walking his dog along the old waterline near the Nelson cemetery when he came across a sow.
“The dog was running ahead of me. He saw it first. I could tell he was up to something because his tail was way up and his ears were perked,” Cherry says.
“I started walking fast to make sure he wasn’t going to get into trouble. All of a sudden I saw these big brown ears. I thought wow, it’s a big dog. And then when I got a good look I realized it was a grizzly bear.”
It took him a few seconds to realize there was a cub as well.
The sow bolted up the bank as Cherry called his dog off. “[The dog] started running back to me, and she started running after the dog. I threw my arms up and yelled and she stopped and the dog stopped. Then she started running towards me and the dog started running toward her. I said I’m out of here.”
Cherry began running as he called his dog, who then fled past him.
“He thought this was fun. He had his tail up. I was huffing it as hard as I could go. I looked behind me, and she was still coming, galloping along.”
Cherry estimates the pursuit continued for a few hundred feet until he and his dog followed a trail down into the bush.
“After I’d run for quite a ways, I realized she wasn’t chasing me anymore,” he says.
“But she was persistent. She stayed behind me for quite a ways. I never realized just how frightening it was until I got home and sat down.”
Cherry says from his experience working in the bush, he has no doubt the bear was a grizzly, for it had a hump on its back and black circles around its eyes. Its hide was tawny, while the cub — which he guesses was about two years old — was darker.
“I’ve run into lots of bears in my life, but this is the first time I’ve been chased by one the point where I felt threatened,” he says.
“Most of the time they run away, but this one didn’t. I figure if I hadn’t been so nimble on my feet, she’d have got me. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to eat me or just chase me away from her cub, but I wasn’t about to find out.”
Cherry says he and his wife see people using the trails all the time, including women pushing strollers.
About two and a half hours earlier that day, Patti McPherson was running by herself in the same area when she heard branches cracking.
“I typically slow down or stop when I hear that,” she says. “I thought it would be a wild grouse or whatever I typically see.”
However, when she turned, “there was a bear charging at me. I just froze on the spot. I remembered to be still. Some people make noise, but I didn’t. I didn’t stare it down; I stared to the side. It came charging straight at me, but then it was like it bounced off an invisible barrier and carried on.”
McPherson says the bear came at her “at a good clip. He came within about 15 feet [5 m] of me, and then turned and ran, like an arc, back down the hill.”
After it disappeared, she backed down the trail, and when she thought it was safe, ran back to the road, where she met up with someone planning to walk the same route.
She later filed a report with conservation officials, and looked at bear pictures online, which reinforced her belief that the bear was a grizzly.
“It didn’t have a long snout like a black or brown bear,” she says. “It had a flatter face. It fit the description of a grizzly, but not a big one.”
McPherson has never encountered a bear on the trail in the 12 years she’s used it, though she typically runs earlier in the day. She counts herself lucky that the batteries on her MP3 player died when she reached the trailhead.
“If I’d had my earphones in, I definitely wouldn’t have heard it,” she says. “There was no bearing teeth or roaring, just the running and cracking of the tree branches.”
McPherson adds the bear was well camouflaged. Although she had been thinking about buying bear spray, she didn’t have any on her.
“It does make me more wary of some of the things I did wrong,” she says. “You shouldn’t be running without a partner, and definitely don’t run with ear buds.”
Although she clapped her hands a few times when she entered the trail, “that’s the only noise I made. Otherwise I think I was pretty quiet.”
McPherson and husband Mike Stolte have since posted signs about the bear at the cemetery gate and at the start of the road that the trails branch off from.
Nelson Cst. Paul Bayes says police also received a report Saturday of two grizzlies near the cemetery service road on Highway 6, although they weren’t causing problems.
“[The complainant] described it as just grazing,” he says. “Conservation was advised but we didn’t take any action. They weren’t getting into anything.”
On Sunday, a hiker also reported two bears on the trails in the same area. When he came upon them, they responded by rearing up on their hind legs.
Conservation officer Jason Hawkes told 103.5 The Bridge that the grizzlies are feeding on natural vegetation, but he encourages nearby residents to make sure garbage and other attractants are secured to prevent the animals from becoming habituated.
Last summer, a grizzly and her cubs led conservation officers on a month-long chase through Rosemont, the cemetery, and Uphill. They were finally trapped and relocated.
Bear sightings prompt trail closures
The regional district has closed portions the Great Northern trail from Cedar Street to Cottonwood Lake until further notice to prevent encounters with grizzly bears in the area.
The city has also closed the following:
- The Stanley Street trail (which runs above the cemetery)
- The Mountain Station Burlington Northern Trail (south)
- The Nelson cemetery access road that connects to Highway 6